Out of the classroom and back to the land: Students in Stanley Mission embrace cultural immersion program

STANLEY MISSION — Not so long ago, Evan McKenzie described himself as “a not-that-good-of-a-going-to-school-every-day student.”

Sometimes the 15-year-old from the northern Saskatchewan community of Stanley Mission deliberately skipped class. Other times he found himself running late and decided it was easier to stay home than face the reprimands of teachers.

But now the Cree student is ready to try something new. When the new school year gets underway in the fall, he’s ready to put in the effort.

“I’ll try my hardest to improve,” McKenzie said this spring. “I’ll try to improve to go to school more.”

This change in attitude is exactly what leaders in Stanley Mission are chasing.

Late last year, the community’s on-reserve high school received a $300,000 federal grant for a new land-based education program, which got off the ground this February. The goal? Take struggling kids out of the classroom for a semester and immerse them in Cree language and culture.

Students learn how to hunt, trap, fish, prepare traditional meals and survive in the bush. Cree language is part of everything they do.

The teens miss out on weeks of academic instruction. But Sallie McLeod, director of education for Stanley Mission, says that’s not the point.

“Academics is the least of my problems. I really don’t care,” McLeod says. “They weren’t succeeding in the first place and, in this program, them having a focus, a positive focus, is my goal.”

McLeod was one of the people responsible for putting together the funding proposal that led to the launch of the land-based immersion program. She said she was driven by the need to help the community in the aftermath of a string of suicides that rocked Stanley Mission and surrounding reserves in the fall of 2016.

“The community needed to do something. We needed a focus that was positive for our students, for our young people,” McLeod said.

Students in Stanley Mission’s land-based education program learn how to catch fish. Provided photo.Saskatoon

She was convinced the answer was to get kids back on the land, as their grandparents and great-grandparents had been. Fewer youth are taken out on traplines now, she says. Many parents who attended residential schools never learned how to live off the land. People are increasingly keen to stay indoors, glued to screens. Sometimes kids want to learn traditional ways of life, but don’t know where to turn for instruction.

“We didn’t have all these problems when we were growing up on the land. So the best way is to bring our children back to be with the land,” McLeod said. “I’m hoping it will heal them mentally, physically spiritually.”

One of the first things McLeod did after receiving federal money for the program was approach Glenn McKenzie, the high school’s former principal. McKenzie was happily retired but McLeod predicted — correctly — that the opportunity to get involved with the novel program would convince him to put his teaching hat back on.

“To go back to cut my teeth with 13, 14 and 15-year-olds, especially the ones that were troubled …” McKenzie grins and trails off. “I thought: I can do this until the end of the school year.”

He was put in charge of 13 students from Grades 7 to 9, who had been chosen as the ‘guinea pigs’ for the cultural immersion program. McKenzie says it’s a fascinating challenge to figure out how to be a teacher outside a classroom.

He does his best to incorporate culture, history, language and math lessons in everything he does. If he and the students are learning to operate snowmobiles, it’s an opportunity to talk about how the emergence of the machines changed the way of life in a community that once relied on dog sleds. A day building a smokehouse can be peppered with math instruction. Above all, McKenzie urges the kids to behave as a family, to treat each other with respect.

“This isn’t about taking the bad kids and putting them out in the bush where they can’t get into trouble. If that’s what this program was about, I wouldn’t be here,” McKenzie said. “This is about these kids learning the kind of skills and attitudes and values that they’ll be able to bring back into the regular program.”

He doesn’t know if kids who go through the program will see improved grades when they return to school; it’s a possibility, he says, but not the goal.

“And in terms of these kids’ attitudes toward participating and being respectful, working hard, asking questions, solving problems, sharing work, helping each other out — it may sound a little bit like pie-in-the-sky, but for these students, this is real progress and real learning,” McKenzie said.

The Stanley Mission high school has always offered Cree language and culture education, but nothing like the experimental immersion program. Students outside the land-based program receive just one or two hours of classroom instruction in language and culture each week and teachers are frustrated with their limited ability to deliver meaningful education in these subjects.

“There’s just not enough time, the setting is just not right,” McLeod said. “We need to teach Cree, we need to teach the culture, out on the land to make it more effective, to make it more real … You can try and try in a classroom, but there’s just something missing.”

The $300,000 that allowed the immersion program to launch this year was a one-time grant. McLeod is trying to find more money to continue and possibly expand the program next school year. Many parents have asked that their kids be allowed in the program and teachers have requested that all students — not just those struggling in school — be able to participate.

The band has money for educational programs and McLeod said some form of land-based education will be offered next year. However, if no outside funding is secured, students may only be able to partake in the program for days, instead of weeks or months.

“I really wish that we had money to promise these kids that this program will continue and that it will be there for them,” McLeod said.

If money is found, McLeod plans to build a permanent Cree cultural camp for the program. This year, students worked out of a cabin in a gravel pit a short drive from the school, but McLeod wants to get them out on the water come fall. The high school has already purchased building materials with the grant received last year and McLeod hopes students can build the camp on the shores of a nearby lake as part of their on-the-land education.

Evan McKenzie, the Grade 9 student who hopes to turn his attendance problem around, said he hopes that can happen.

He said learning to live off the land has been a powerful experience and one he hopes many others can have.

“The future kids won’t have this unless we keep it going,” he said.

“These people who are teaching us this, we can pass it on in the future to other kids … When I’m old and grey I’d like to see kids cutting meat and talking their language and doing all sorts of things.”

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Out of the classroom and back to the land: Students in Stanley Mission embrace cultural immersion program